Not for Attack

Rishi went down the slope.

The borrowed quarterstaff found the ground ahead of him, testing roots hidden under web and leaves. Maeril stayed at his shoulder. Neither spoke.

The ring of elves stood tight around Thiarel. Rishi stopped at its edge.

A young elf lay at its centre. His festival robe had been cut from throat to hip. Two punctures showed beneath his ribs, and the skin around them had darkened almost to black. Someone had bound moss over the wounds. Someone else had torn it away again.

His chest did not rise.

Thiarel dropped beside him. Her burned forearm struck the ground hard enough to make her flinch, but she did not spare it a glance.

“How long ago?”

One of the kneeling elves answered in Elvish. The words came apart around a sob.

Thiarel put two fingers to the young man’s throat. She shifted them once, then bent until her ear was close to his mouth.

Nothing.

Rishi knew the discipline of that check. Breath. Pulse. Time. He also knew from the speed of Thiarel’s hands that the last of those had not yet run out.

“Bring clean water,” she said.

A wooden cup passed through the ring. Thiarel took a shallow bowl from the pouch at her belt and emptied the water into it. Her injured arm trembled. The other moved without hesitation.

First came a twist of dark moss. Then a piece of amber sap no larger than the end of her thumb. A leaf vein lay preserved inside it, fine and green against the gold.

She set the sap on the young man’s chest.

Last came a seed covered in silver. Its surface had been rubbed smooth by years in the pouch. Thiarel held it over the bowl, drew a small knife, and opened the pad of her thumb.

One drop of blood struck the water.

She lowered the seed after it.

Her words were too quiet for Rishi to follow. They had none of the reach of the call in the memory hollow. This was close magic, spoken to one body before death could carry it beyond hearing.

Maeril caught Rishi’s sleeve.

Thiarel turned the seed once through the water. Green bled from the moss. The silver dulled wherever the mixture touched it.

She drew the seed across the young man’s lips, then along each puncture. Her palm came down over the sap on his chest. Pain tightened her face. She pressed harder.

The amber softened beneath her palm.

Thiarel spoke one final word.

The sap collapsed into a smear of pale resin. A crack ran through the seed from end to end.

The young man’s back arched.

Air tore into him. His hands struck the earth, fingers clawing through wet leaves as his body convulsed. Thiarel held him at the shoulder and hip until the spasm passed.

He breathed again.

The next breath came shallow. The third caught behind a cry.

Relief broke through the ring. One elf covered her mouth with both hands. Another bent over until his forehead touched the ground. An older man reached for the restored youth, but Thiarel stopped him with a look.

“Keep him flat. Keep him warm. The poison is gone. The wound is not.”

A healer moved in with folded cloth and fresh moss. Only then did Thiarel sit back.

Her face had gone grey beneath the soot. The split seed lay in the bowl, bare wood showing through its ruined silver. Nothing remained of the amber sap except a dull stain on the young man’s skin.

Maeril’s grip eased when he took another breath.

Rishi’s free hand had gone to the scar beneath his robe. He lowered it, but Maeril had seen.

“The working held here,” she said softly. “The grove tore mine apart.”

He knew. She had told him beside the stream. It did not make it easy to watch the hands that had killed him hold this young man through his return.

The boy breathed again. Rishi counted with him until his own chest eased.

Thiarel looked up at her. Then at Rishi. She gave them one short nod before turning back to her clansman.

One death had been answered.

The rest of the clearing remained.

Wounded elves lay on cloaks between the trees. Others cut the last captives from webbing or dragged spider carcasses away from them. The graceful layers worn for the observance had become bandages. Blood marked pale cloth. Smoke had settled into hair and skin.

The feast lay under it all.

Leaf wreaths had been trampled into the mud. Cups rolled beneath hurried feet. One of the low tables had split down the middle, its food scattered among silk and broken pottery. A lantern burned on its side until someone stamped it out.

The gathered families had laid their weapons aside for the vigil. They had fought with what the clearing gave them.

A kitchen knife with a notched edge. A wood axe dark with spider fluid. A carved walking stick held in both hands by an elf whose arms would not stop shaking. At the edge of the trees, a woman pulled a broken chair leg from a spider’s eye and kept it.

Their voices gathered as the danger receded.

Rishi caught the word mythal in the Elvish around him.

His name.

Maeril’s.

She released his sleeve. Her hand went to the component pouch her hawk had brought her, checking that it remained secure at her right hip. Her gaze moved from the speakers to the trees and back again.

Thiarel’s head came up at a sharper burst from across the clearing. Exhaustion had not made her slow. She answered without rising. The reply silenced one voice and started three more.

“Rishi. Maeril.”

Caereth crossed the clearing toward them. His hair had come loose, and the sleeve of his festival coat was striped with spider fluid. The sword in his hand was a practical blade, its edge chipped where it had met chitin.

He looked first at the young man on the ground.

“Alive?”

“Again,” Maeril said.

Some tension left his jaw. Not much.

He looked over Rishi and Maeril next. His attention stopped at the bruising along Rishi’s side, then at the singed cuff of Maeril’s coat.

“Are either of you bitten?”

“No.”

“Good.” Caereth lowered his voice. “Stay near me.”

The clearing shifted before Rishi could ask why.

Root-Mother Elenya approached through the wounded.

She had lost the mantle she had worn in the memory hollow. Mud stained the hem of her robe, and silver hair had come free beside one cheek. Two elves followed her carrying blankets and the house’s emergency medicines.

Elenya carried the Living Staff.

Both hands supported it across her body. The metal caps caught the lantern light. Faint colour moved beneath the bark where the old grain held Maeril’s abjurations and the grove’s later gift.

Conversations thinned as she passed.

She stopped before Rishi and looked at the quarterstaff in his hand.

“That one is Sirael’s,” she said.

“From her emergency cache.”

“She plans for poor evenings.”

“She planned well.”

Caereth held out his empty hand. Rishi laid the borrowed weapon across it.

Elenya offered him the Living Staff.

“This belongs to you.” Her voice carried beyond the four of them. “Our observance was broken by those who attacked my house. I will not ask its defenders to remain unarmed.”

Rishi accepted it.

Warmth met his palm. The livingwood yielded by the width of a breath, fitting itself to the grip it knew. He set the lower cap against the earth.

The sound was small.

Half the clearing heard it.

Elenya held his gaze for a moment, then turned to direct the healers who had followed her.

It did not settle the clearing.

Caereth moved closer.

“Some were afraid when the mythal answered the names in the hollow. Then the spiders came during a rite that has passed undisturbed for generations.”

Maeril looked toward the voices. “Do they think we brought them?”

“Some think you did. Some think the staff woke whatever drew them. Others only know that you arrived, the mythal stirred, and their kin bled.”

Rishi’s feet set themselves beneath him. Not for attack. For balance.

Beside him, Maeril had gone very still.